Greetings! Glad to find this group!

[Guest guest]

Greetings! Glad to find this group. I read all the articles in

the " Beginning CRON " folder and many others as well. I understand

that you require everyone to read Dr. Walford's book and I intend to

do that within the week. However, I hope you will consider posting

this message because I am not exactly new to caloric restriction, I

just have never been part of an organized group.

For nine years I have been practising my own calorie reduced " system

of eating " . Over the years I have read about caloric restriction as

a concept but never felt compelled, until now to seek out any other

individuals who might be doing the same thing. I am a 49 year old

female living in California. I have been concerned about weight

management ever since college. After the birth of my 4th child

almost 10 years ago, I began a regimen of eating the majority of my

nutrients at night. I found this to WORK for me to lose not only

the pregnancy weight, but also to make me lean (size 4-6).

Additionally, I felt/still feel extremely HEALTHY. Healthy feeling

that is, after I made the mental leap into living with a certain

degree of feeling hungry. To quelch hungry feelings I just found

constructive things to do with my time. Now I rarely feel hungry

unless my evening meal is postponed for some reason.

My system is rather loose and not as completely concerned with

optimizing nutritional content as I've read about here in your

articles so far. I won't bore you with examples of what I eat and

don't eat but I want to point out two things about my routine.

Firstly, I drink a good bit of coffee during the day. My favorite

coffee drink is 4 shots of espresso over ice with a little whole

milk and I drink 2 of these a day. It picks me up and calms me down

all at the same time. Coffee has been an intregal part of being

able to maintain my eating system over the years. Secondly, my

husband is from the Middle East and I make(or more acurately, my

housekeeper makes or I buy ready made, frozen) vegetable stews that

we eat with rice. I run my own business and do not have time to make

Persian food on a regular basis although when I do have time it is a

kind of catharsis to spend the time making it. Also, Greek Salad is

a staple in my diet!

My health is above average. I have had all the standard battery of

heatlh evaluations done (BP, EKG, cholesterol, stress)in the past

year and my doctors are impressed with the results.

So why am I here? My goal is, now that I have an ongoing, working

system of calorie restriction, to learn more about the exact biology

of calorie restriction and to improve the quality of my diet. I've

already learned quite a bit from your archives and I'm ready to put

some of what I've learned into practice. I am looking forward to

reading Dr. Walford's book. Two books that I've read and really like

are Healthy Aging By Weil, MD and Age Right (I can't

recollect the author at this moment), both touch on caloric

restriction. Dr. Weil's book talks about the Okinawan diet.

In addition I'm ready to start spreading the word about caloric

restriction. Something hit me awhile ago. I'm getting older, never

been into activism of any sort and I have a pet peeve about

overweight/industrial interests that keep people overweight. So what

am I doing about it? Nothing until now. I would like to do

something.

I look forward to spending time as part of this group.